Sandy Wadlington (born in 1951) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in an old farmhouse in Westwood, a suburb of Boston. The house had a pond in the backyard and woods nearby. When she was a child, she did all the usual kid things here - played with dolls, rode her bicycle, built forts and tree houses, did lots of drawing and went ice skating on the pond. When she reached the 5th grade, Sandy began to take seriously the idea of becoming an artist. She was probably influenced by the legacy of Alvan Fisher, her great-great-great grandfather, who was an artist in the 19th century.
Her love for art made her to enroll in Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1969. This was during a time of political and social change, and the world of art was also in turmoil. By then, drawing pictures of farms and trees was no longer acceptable or even encouraged, and Sandy wasn’t sure which direction to take. She decided to take some time off from art school to enable her to gain some “life experience” and to earn some money. However, she continued visiting galleries museums, reading art books, and drawing and painting but on a more casual basis. She was drawing landscapes and the interiors of her surroundings. She worked as a gardener, waitress, print shop coordinator and school bus driver. In 1978, Sandy married a photographer she had met in art school and moved to his home in San Antonio, Texas. Unfortunately, the marriage didn’t last. She received her BFA in Painting in 1989.
